


The Flooded Land

by eriah211



Category: Primeval
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Season/Series 05 Spoilers, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eriah211/pseuds/eriah211
Summary: SPOILERS THROUGH THE 5 SEASONS. Set at the end of s5. The notes Danny found on Helen's body lead Connor and Abby to a mysterious place.





	The Flooded Land

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the primeval_denial Art Challenge 2018 for a wonderful artwork by tli. Betaed by the awesome fredbassett, all remaining mistakes are mine.  
> Previously posted on livejournal.

 

“Well, at least the name is accurate,” Abby said, looking around at the devastated landscape.  
  
Connor nodded. “The flooded land.”  
  
Despite the strict security measures the ARC was now supposed to follow, it hadn’t been too difficult to convince Lester to let them go alone through an anomaly on a mission. Connor was sure that the chance of getting some proof of Philip Burton’s connection with Helen had been too tempting and had helped persuade Lester to bend the rules just a bit this time.  
  
The notes that Danny had found on Helen’s body mentioned not only Burton, but also a route through several anomalies that led to a place she had called ‘The flooded land’. The notes had shown that place had been important to her, and so it could be important to them as well, but they had to check without Burton knowing.  
  
“Miss Maitland, Mister Temple, do try not to get stranded again,” Lester had said before they started their journey.  “The amount of paperwork I had to fill out the first time was a complete nightmare.”  
  
“You can stop it, Lester, we aren’t buying it any more,” Abby had said, smiling fondly at him. “Don’t worry, we survived alone in the Cretaceous for over a year, I’m sure we can manage this.”  
  
Lester had rolled his eyes, sighing in exasperation, but Connor had noticed the light smile the man wasn’t trying to hide any more.  
  


***

  
They had to go through three different anomalies, carefully following Helen’s notes, to get to that mysterious place.  
  
The first one led them to a Spaghetti Junction with dozens of anomalies, and the second one to an endless sea of sand dunes with absolutely nothing in sight. They had waited not far away for the next anomaly to open, as it was supposed to do, and got ready for any ugly surprises they might find on the other side. When they finally went through the last anomaly, though, they found no threat, human or animal, just the decaying ruins of an old town.  
  
“It’s the future then,” Abby said, looking around them.  
  
It was difficult to pinpoint how far into the future they were, but the few houses that were still standing looked heartbreakingly familiar. There was nothing futuristic about them. They had the old-fashioned design of the small, cosy homes they could easily find in so many parts of the world in their time.  
  
Many houses had collapsed long ago and the rubble had been covered almost completely by vegetation. Some houses on low-laying land had been claimed by a lake, which seemed to have easily made its way inland, swallowing everything on its path.  
  
“Where should we start looking?” Connor asked.  
  
“I really don’t know,” Abby answered, frowning. “It’s not as if Helen will have left a neon sign over her secret lair. Without knowing what we’re really looking for, this could take us days... or weeks.”  
  
“This anomaly will close soon, but it’s supposed to open regularly every 24 hours,” Connor read from Helen’s notes. “We don’t have to worry about that, but we still don’t even know if it’s here, whatever ‘it’ is,” he added, frustrated. “It could be somewhere a few days from here or mayb-“  
  
“Would you say that counts as a neon light?” Abby interrupted, pointing at a half-ruined house not far away.  
  
Through one of the holes that had once been the windows of the second floor of the house, they could clearly see the bright dancing shards of an anomaly.  
  
“Sort of,” Connor replied.  
  
“I think we should check that, even if it’s just to make sure nothing with big teeth comes through it while we’re here,” Abby said as she started walking cautiously towards the house, an EMD ready in her hand.  
  
“As long as there’s nothing with big teeth already here, waiting to eat us...” Connor said, as he checked the stun grenades in his bag.  
  
That land didn’t look like the usual places where they had found the hideous future predators before, but this was the future so it was better to be safe than sorry.  
  
The house was so close to the lake that the water had surrounded it completely. Standing barely above water in a small rise of land, it looked like a heavy rain would probably be enough to raise the level enough to finally let the lake flood it.  
  
“We’ll have to get wet,” Abby announced when they reached the shore.  
  
Not the worst thing that could happen, Connor thought. Definitely not the worst they’d had to do back in the Cretaceous.  
  
They checked the surroundings one more time for any threat and then, using a long fallen branch to check the depth of the water, they started wading towards the house. It was slow and uncomfortable, the level of water reaching as high as their chest in some places, but they managed to keep their bags dry and they found no surprises on their way. Once they reached the house, though, the problems weren’t over.  
  
There still didn’t seem to be any living creature nearby, but the house itself could easily be dangerous. The old building, made almost completely of now-rotting wood, looked like it could collapse at any moment.  
  
“Do you think the stairs will stand our weight?” Connor asked dubiously, looking in from the threshold.  
  
“I think there’s only one way to find out,” Abby said, stepping cautiously inside the house.  
  
Connor was about to follow her when a distant yell made him freeze on the spot. It had almost sounded like the voice of a man shouting his name, but it couldn’t be, could it? The confused look on Abby’s face as she turned around at the foot of the stairs convinced him that he hadn’t imagined it, though.  
  
Connor scanned the surroundings and then he saw it, a human figure running towards them and waving to get their attention as if his life depended on it.  
  
“Get out of there, Connor! Go back!”  
  
The voice was clearer this time and the message was too.  
  
OK, so maybe it wasn’t that man’s life that was at stake here, Connor thought with a shiver. He turned to warn Abby, but she had clearly got the message too because she was already running towards him.  
  
In her haste to get out of the house, Abby accidentally smacked the doorframe with her arm and part of the rotting wood fell with a loud thud. Before Abby tackled him, throwing both of them to the lake, Connor had seen a giant tentacle burst out from under the stairs and twist around the fallen plank of wood in a heartbeat.  
  
They dived and then swam towards the shore, trying to leave the house behind as fast as possible, and when they finally reached it, they found their saviour standing there with a rifle ready in his hands.  
  
“Stephen?” Abby asked, confusion evident in her voice.  
  
The man standing there was indeed the spitting image of the man they had buried with deep sorrow a few years ago.  
  
Connor stood in shock for a moment until he suddenly remembered they were running away from a dangerous creature, but when he turned back at the house, there was no sign of it at all. The building looked as empty as it had before they had gone there, but now he knew the look was certainly deceiving as there was something waiting very patiently inside for any intruders.  
  
Sighing with relief at not being followed, Connor then turned again to face the man that simply couldn’t be there.  
  
“Stephen, is it really you?” Connor asked, still not daring to believe they had their friend back somehow.  
  
“Has it been so long that you don’t recognise me, Connor?” Stephen replied with a sad smile, as he put the rifle away.  
  
“It’s been too long, mate,” Connor said, tears starting to cloud his sight.  
  
Abby was the first one to hug him, but Connor was right behind her, crushing both his friends tightly.  
  


***

  
“How did you know that creature was there?” Connor said once the hug was over and it was time to ask some questions and get some answers.  
  
“It’s usually there,” Stephen said. “It’s a smart, sneaky creature. It knows the anomaly attracts attention and so it waits, hidden inside the house, to capture anything that comes through the anomaly or tries to get to it.”  
  
“How are you even here?” Abby was the one to finally ask the important question. “How can you be alive?”  
  
“You thought I was dead then,” Stephen replied with sadness, and a bit of shame, as far as Connor could tell. “I wasn’t sure...”  
  
“Of course we thought you were dead!” Abby said, surprise slowly giving way to anger. “We buried you! We were devastated, Cutter was devastated!”  
  
Stephen lowered his head and said nothing, but Abby hadn’t finished yet.  
  
“They only found a few pieces that we could bury, you know?” Abby added, her anger deflating as fast as it had appeared. “The casket was almost empty....”  
  
The sadness in her voice was probably worse than the yelling, Connor thought as he stared at Stephen’s lowered face. This wasn’t a clone, he was sure about it. There wasn’t any trace of the blankness they had seen on the face of Cutter’s clone. That was a very real and very heartbroken Stephen Hart.  
  
“The ARC wasn’t the same without you, mate,” Connor said honestly. “Especially for Cutter. After Helen tried to kill him, he just quit and-“  
  
“She tried to kill him?” Stephen said, looking up in surprise.  
  
The hurt in Stephen’s eyes surprised Connor. He had lost any faith he could have had in Helen a long, long time ago, unlike Stephen, so it seemed.  
  
“She was the one who saved you, right?” Connor asked, finally saying out loud the idea that had been going around in his head since the moment he saw Stephen in front of him.  
  
“Yes, she did,” he admitted. “I was already seriously injured, but I remember somebody dragging me through an anomaly and then, when I woke up, she was there.”  
  
“She probably just left a dead body in your place to fool us,” Connor reasoned.  
  
At least he hoped the poor guy had been dead when she left him there, Connor thought, mentally cringing.  
  
“Helen told me to wait here until I’d fully recovered and she left,” Stephen added. “At first there was a man here with me. He looked exactly like the man who died in front of us in the Silurian, but I never got the chance to talk much to him. He disappeared as soon as I started feeling better. Fortunately, he left some guns and food behind that I could use.”  
  
“And you’ve been waiting here since then... for Helen?” Connor asked, surprised.  
  
“At first, I was too weak to go anywhere,” Stephen explained, shrugging his shoulders. “Then, when I felt better, I realised I didn’t know how to go back. I tried the anomaly at the house, but I almost got eaten by the creature and when I finally managed to take a look at the other side, it was useless, it led to a prehistoric swamp. The other anomaly wasn’t very promising either...”  
  
Connor remembered the carefully calculated steps they had had to take to reach their destination. Without Helen’s notes it would have been almost impossible to find that place on their own.  
  
“So I eventually gave up and decided to wait for Helen,” Stephen admitted. “I knew she would know how to get back home, but she never came back...”  
  
It was Abby’s turn to lower her head and Stephen noticed it right away.  
  
“She isn’t coming back, Stephen,” Connor said, knowing he owed his friend the truth. “She died some time ago. We found some notes on her body and they led us here, but we didn’t know what we were going to find.”  
  
Stephen pressed his lips together in a thin line and simply nodded slowly.  
  
Connor thought he didn’t look exactly surprised by the news. He supposed Stephen had already thought Helen being dead was very much a possibility. After all, she hadn’t come back for him and they both knew Helen wouldn’t have taken the time to save him if she hadn’t had something planned for him.  
  
“I would have liked to talk to her, face to face, one last time,” Stephen finally said, regret showing in his eyes. “I had so many questions and she had a lot of explaining to do...”  
  
“I don’t think we’ve got many answers for you, but at least we know how to get out of here,” Connor said, smiling at him. “Time to go back home, Stephen.”  
  
  


***

  
Stephen took them to his shelter to spend the night and rest until the anomaly reopened again the next day. It was a surprisingly intact cabin in the woods, a few kilometres away. If Stephen hadn’t happened to be hunting near the lake when they’d come through the anomaly, they might never have found it, Connor realised. It looked like luck had been on their side for once.  
  
As Stephen had warned them on their way to the cabin, they didn’t find anything that could give them any clue about Burton and his relationship with Helen. Stephen had never heard the name before, he told them, and had never seen any man fitting his description either.  
  
The next morning, as they walked towards the anomaly together, Stephen didn’t even look back at the place that had been his home for so long.  
“You know they’re going to ask you a lot of questions when you get back, right?” Abby said to him.  
  
“Yes, I know. Especially Lester, I suppose,” Stephen said with a grimace.  
  
“Don’t be like that. Lester isn’t that bad once you get to know him.” Abby elbowed him lightly. “He really cares, even if he pretends he doesn’t.”  
“Yes, man, he can really surprise you,” Connor agreed. “You just have to give him a chance.”  
  
“Which reminds me,” Abby added, turning serious. “You have a long overdue conversation with Cutter. And this time you’re both going to talk,” she added without giving him a chance to say anything. “Even if Ryan has to knock Cutter out again and bring him back by force.”  
  
“She’s serious, mate,” Connor said, smiling at him. “Be careful or she’ll have both of you locked up somewhere until you talk about your issues.”  
Abby rolled her eyes in annoyance, but she couldn’t stop a fond smile from appearing on her face.  
  
When they got to the anomaly site, there wasn’t any surprise waiting for them, fortunately. The anomaly was open and ready for them to start their journey.  
  
“Ready?” Connor asked as they were about to go through.  
  
“More than ready,” Stephen said, smiling widely.  
  
And without hesitation, the three of them started their way back home.  
  
  
End-


End file.
